Lady in White Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Lady in White Blu-ray Movie Review

"Help me find her!"

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown June 20, 2025

Writer/director Frank LaLoggia's creepy 'Lady in White' was originally released on Blu-ray by Shout Factory in 2016, complete with three different cuts of the film. That edition has sadly since gone out of print. Sandpiper Pictures has acquired rights to the movie, though, and resurrects 'Lady in White' on Blu-ray... albeit only with the unrated director's cut. Still, solid video and strong audio, as well as many of the special features from the Shout Factory disc, are here to make the sting of missing cuts a little less painful. The film stars a young Lukas Haas alongside Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, Katherine Helmond, Jason Presson, Renata Vanni, Angelo Bertolini, Joelle Jacobi, Jared Rushton, Gregory Levinson, Lucy Lee Flippin, Tom Bower, Jack Andreozzi, Sydney Lassick, Rita Zohar, Hal Bokar, Rose Weaver, Henry Harris and Bruce Kirby.

Some 1980s horror has aged like fine wine. Spooks, scares and practical fx aplenty. Alas, other '80s horror hasn't survived the test of time so well, losing their bite as others have ascended to the top of the heap. Lady in White exists among the latter, owing its legs to a fine performance from then-little Lukas Haas but losing much of its verve, nerve and suspense in the nearly forty years since its release. There's still a warm family drama at the core of its horror, one that deals rather effectively with childhood loss and grief, but that's merely the center of an otherwise predictable, rather formulaic bit of eeriness that crams in everything from ghosts to a serial killer (the identity of whom you'll spot a mile off). Is Haas good enough to support the entire endeavor? Sure, as '80s VHS creepies go. But the cover art is far scarier than anything that lies within.

Haas plays Frankie Scarlatti, a spunky and imaginative boy who dons a Dracula mask for his school's Halloween party in the fictional New England town of Willowpoint Falls circa 1962. Frankie is different from the other kids, including pranksters Donald (Jared Rushton) and Louie (Gregory Levinson), who lock Frankie up in the cloakroom after hours. Save for breaking the window open and jumping out, Frankie is entrapped there for the night. Perched atop the cloak rack near the corner window, Frankie notices a child ghost (Joelle Jacobi) go through the door. She has things to tell Frankie but he has trouble making sense of them. Shortly thereafter, a masked figure breaks open the door, frightening Frankie and knocking him out. After awakening and returning home, Frankie discovers that this girl may be connected to a series of child murders that have ravaged the town over the last several years. There is quite a bit of racism and bigotry in Willowpoint Falls and the school's black custodian, Harold Williams (Henry Harris), is soon arrested and identified as the prime suspect. LaLoggia weaves Frankie's childhood memories of his mother and his attending her wake along with surreal images of Melissa Montgomery's mother, Anne (Karen Powell).

Click here to read the rest of Dr. Stephen Larson's review of the film, which he says "works well as a study of an extended Italian-American family and a boy's odyssey in discovering the truth behind a town's mysterious history."

Lady in White Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sandpiper's 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer is sourced from a master writer/director Frank LaLoggia had a hand in supervising, though it still has a dated, diminished appearance that evokes first generation Blu-ray quality. Colors are warm and rich, with vibrant saturation and strong contrast, but also overpower the image, resulting in at-times overly maudlin, orange-hued faces and blaring primaries. The palette certainly pops, despite skewing skintones and other elements, and making the picture much more stylized than convincing. Detail, meanwhile, is all over the place. Crisp and refined one moment, soft and subdued the next. Edges are generally clean and nicely defined, but fine textures lag, with close-ups rendered beautifully and several problematic medium to wide shots looking a touch muddled and smeary. There doesn't appear to be much noise reduction at work, thankfully, and grain has a nice presence. That said, faint compression artifacts aren't uncommon, the film's fx and composited elements look worse for the march of time, and print specks pop up here and there.

Lady in White Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For some baffling reason Sandpiper Pictures has ditched the lossless 5.1 remix (supervised by LaLoggia) included with the 2016 Shout Factory release of the film and only preserved that edition's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track. It's a decent enough track -- with nicely prioritzed dialogue, a bright, summery representation of the movie's score, and clean, well-defined sound effects -- but it lacks the immersiveness and atmosphere of its 5.1 cousin.

Lady in White Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Sandpiper Pictures' Blu-ray release of Lady in White features the film's 118-minute Unrated Director's Cut, along with several extras. Missing from the 2016 BD are the 127-minute Extended Director's Cut and the 114-minute Original Theatrical Version, as well as an extended behind the scenes featurette, a promotional short film, alternate trailers, TV & radio spots, a behind-the-scenes photo montage, an extended photo gallery, and three additional music tracks.

• Filmmaker's Introduction (HD, 1 minute) - Writer/director Frank LaLoggia (get used to that name folks, he pops up a lot) offers a brief, almost unnecessary introduction to the film.

• Filmmaker's Audio Commentary - A 1997 commentary track with writer/director Frank LaLoggia.

• Behind the Scenes Footage (HD, 16 minutes) - Rough behind-the-scenes footage from the set, with an introduction and optional audio commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia.

• Deleted Scenes (SD, 36 minutes) - Nine extended and deleted scenes, complete with yet another introduction and optional audio commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia.

• Theatrical Trailer (SD, 2 minutes)

Lady in White Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sandpiper Pictures makes some strange decisions with the Blu-ray release of Lady in White, preserving some extras and elements of the 2016 Shout Factory version (which Sandpiper doesn't exactly have a good reputation of doing) while jettisoning its lossless 5.1 surround track, two entire cuts of the film, and numerous special features. What remains is a solid video transfer and a decent DTS-HD Master Audio stereo mix, which would be a whole lot less disappointing if so much wasn't left on the cutting room floor.